Friday, March 28, 2008

Bad Draft Kit

This weekend contains one of the highlights of my year. Tomorrow I'll be at the first of two fantasy baseball drafts for the 2008 season. Mind you, they're nowhere near as special as Easter or Christmas, family birthdays or my wedding anniversary, but for a big baseball fan with a competitive mind, it's just six hours of fun fun fun.

So for those who aren't so much into baseball, I ask for your patience and tolerance with today's post.

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TOP TEN SIGNS YOU BOUGHT A BAD FANTASY DRAFT KIT

10. The cover says, "Ages 3 and up".

9. When it says a "player has all the tools" it's talking about his socket wrench set.

8. It tells you up front that part of the fantasy is ignoring the Mitchell Report.

7. The only thing inside the box are tea leaves and a cup.

6. Rankings are based on batting average, total run production, hat size, and sunflower seed spitting accuracy (plus distance).

5. It only shows two players at each position ... followed by, "to read this article in full, subscribe today!"

4. The token for Alex Rodriguez is a little silver hat, the one for Randy Johnson is a little silver car, the one for Barry Bonds is a little silver doggie....

3. It's just a bunch of photocopies of some guy's baseball card collection ... from 1967.

2. Sleeper lists include Sanjaya, Woody Allen, and Rip Van Winkle.

AND THE NUMBER ONE SIGN YOU BOUGHT A BAD FANTASY DRAFT KIT?

1. The words "avoid like the plague" aren't even mentioned when discussing the Baltimore Orioles pitching staff.


[Chris White's Little Fivers on Sports with major edits and rewrites by Mark Raymond]

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Now, on Sunday I'll be working at a local arena doing concessions to raise money for my daughter's choir so, yeah, my weekend is pretty booked. I'll see you on Monday.

Mark

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WEB SITE of the WEEK: Being in the "business" I am, you can imagine that I collect a lot of Internet "bookmarks" (also known as "favorites" for those of you still using Microsoft's Internet Explorer). Well, imagine my surprise when I learned that there were 2,698 of them stored in my browser. Wowsers! That's a lot of sites to track! But I'll be honest: some of them I haven't visited in years. This is where http://www.aignes.com/deadlink.htm comes in handy. It's a handy little freeware program that is under 1.5 megabytes to download, so even if you still use dialup it's pretty fast. The program will load your bookmarks/favorites (it supports all the popular web browsers) and then check them to see if they are still active. The ones that aren't can be easily expunged. QED! The site also has several other programs you might find helpful. A tip o'the Mark Mail cap to that "digital goddess," Kim Komando.

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Mark's Musings is available via email each weekday for free and is a Habeas-certified spam free mailer. Subscribe, view past issues in the Archives, or help defray publishing costs - and *still* be the first to donate this year - at my web site. To contact me, click here. To find something very small that you have dropped onto the floor, put a flashlight on the floor and slowly rotate it. A small object will look significantly bigger (and easier to find) with a shadow attached to it. You are encouraged to forward or reprint "Mark's Musings" freely but please keep the credits attached. Never pinch hit for my credits. Ever. Original material and commentary © 2008 by Mark Raymond. This includes the fine print you're reading now. I update my blog with a copy of this post daily, and extra thoughts, videos, and things that go bump in the night periodically on the weekends. Probably not this weekend. My personal mission statement is John 3:30. Play ball!

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WORDS for YOUR WEEKEND: "Baseball is like church. Many attend, few understand." (Leo Durocher)

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